Russian GP final practice and qualifying
By: Mitchell Adam
Summary
Status: Stopped
Thanks for joining us for coverage of Russian Grand Prix Saturday. We'll be back tomorrow with full live coverage of the race, and we'll have all the news and reaction from qualifying on www.autosport.com. For now, here's our full report from qualifying.
Bottas: "We can clearly see from the result Ferrari was quicker today. We were close in the end, but not quite enough. All weekend they've had the upper hand and have been able to extra more especially from the ultra-soft tyre."
Raikkonen: "Obviously the aim is to be in the front. The feeling has been a lot better this weekend, I just got some traffic on the outlap on the last set and couldn't really make the tyres work as well as the first run."
Vettel: "In Q3 the first run was not really tidy, so I left it to the end. I knew it would be tight, I knew also I would be the first one to cross the line, but then I immediately opened the radio to ask about everybody else. When I got the message that we got it, obviously I was over the moon."
Both Raikkonen and Bottas will be frustrated to have missed pole position by such a tiny margin - the gap from first to third was just 0.095s.
"It's hard to understand how we're going to make it better," it sounds like Raikkonen says. "Anyway, we can talk about it later."
Ferrari: "You've got it, you've got it. That's the way to do it!"
Vettel: "Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!" (We think)
Vettel: "Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!" (We think)
Q3 TIMES
1 Vettel 1m33.194s
2 Raikkonen 1m33.253s
3 Bottas 1m33.289s
4 Hamilton 1m33.767s
5 Ricciardo 1m34.905s
6 Massa 1m35.110s
7 Verstappen 1m35.161s
8 Hulkenberg 1m35.285s
9 Perez 1m35.337s
10 Ocon 1m35.430s
1 Vettel 1m33.194s
2 Raikkonen 1m33.253s
3 Bottas 1m33.289s
4 Hamilton 1m33.767s
5 Ricciardo 1m34.905s
6 Massa 1m35.110s
7 Verstappen 1m35.161s
8 Hulkenberg 1m35.285s
9 Perez 1m35.337s
10 Ocon 1m35.430s
"We've got about 25 seconds in hand. Lewis is more marginal so don't back him," Bottas is told as he prepares for a flier.
Everyone is taking their time to bring the tyres in, nobody going quick yet. But there's still a minute to go.
Raikkonen and the two Mercedes drivers are also out there. All four drivers in the battle for pole have fresh rubber.
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